>My favorite curmudgeonly critic Norman Lebrecht offers his point of view about the ever-increasing trend toward using stars as critical shorthand:Of all the devices that devalue the function of criticism, the bar of stars is among the most pernicious. It suggests that artistic creation can be ticked off like a school essay and subjected to […]

>Despite my memories of the very tense Sr. Irene Marie (who, probably to everyone’s lasting relief, “jumped the wall,” as we used to call leaving the convent in the 1960s), I’m immensely enjoying Tricia Tunstall’s Note by Note: A Celebration of the Piano Lesson (S&S). Noting that “there are very few occasions when a child […]

>Miss Pod is happy that Claire’s latest Monthly Special compiles books about music. And here’s an old favorite–one of the best evocations of music I’ve read is Bruce Brooks’ YA novel Midnight Hour Encores (Harper, 1986).

>Yesterday I was having one of the few unalloyed pleasures of my job, where I was asked to read a book merely for another opinion. We were beyond the yea-or-nay stage of reviewing it–the reviewer and Martha agreed it was really good–and I was just reading it to Keep Up. See, the problem with being […]